Fundamentals Of Coffee

There are many ways of handling coffee. Knowing the
fundamentals of coffee is essential to be able to bring out the
best out of the coffee.

Coffee Cupping

Cup-testing is the most important part of
quality control, some other important
parameters to consider are:

Moisture Content

Having a too high moisture content indicate incomplete
drying of the coffee at origin. If this reaches to about 14 %
or 15 % it can then lead development of off-flavours of a musty
nature. Here, there is also the economic aspect of buying large
quantities of very useless water which is not beneficial in any
way.

On the other hand, having low moisture content is
undesirable in that beans being brittle tend to break up during
handling, thus causing it to burn too quickly when roasted
and this affects flavour.

Size Of Bean

The size of the beans plays a big part during the roasting
process. A roasted charge of unevenly sized beans results in an
unevenly coloured roast, affecting the quality and the taste of
the coffee.

Colour Of The Bean

The colour of the raw bean is correlated with
its quality. Some examples of colours which the
raw bean comes in are blue, yellow and
brown.

The best quality beans are predominantly
blue, while yellow and brown are indicative of poor quality.
Knowing the colour of the beans would provide better knowledge
towards knowing the quality of the coffee from which it is
being made from.

Roasting

Roasting is a key factor to excellent
coffee. The bean loses a good deal of its moisture, for
instance, which means it weighs less after roasting than
before. It loses some protein, about 10 to 15 percent of its
caffeine, and traces of other chemicals. Sugars are burned,
which creates color and some body to the cup.

The beans must be heated and kept
moving constantly so that they do not burn
or roast unevenly, and cooled, or quenched when roasting ends.
Getting hold of the right technique and timing for roasting is
extremely difficult, but once it is achieved, top quality
coffee is produced.